Get your Zumba on

Search area Zumba classes At events.activedayton.com

Ohio’s abundance of water parks makes it easy to melt away your cares
5/25/12
Taste of Cincinnati expected to draw 500,000 people
5/24/12
How discount program is helping arts, patrons
5/22/12
Local ingredients key for bartender
5/16/12
Health clubs giving lifestyle campaign a rigorous workout
5/16/12
> More headlines

Handout

Classes offer fun, fitness

By Debbie Juniewicz, Contributing Writer Updated 7:12 PM Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Vibrant Latin rhythms pulse through the room as the sweat-drenched dancers merengue across the floor.

But this is no dance club or exclusive Miami Beach party — it’s exercise, it’s Zumba.

And Zumba is hot, according to a recent American College of Sports Medicine survey completed by more than 2,600 fitness professionals. Zumba and other dance workouts came in at No. 9 on the Worldwide Survey of Fitness Trends for 2012.

“Zumba and other dance workouts first appeared on the list of potential trends in 2010, but this is the first year Zumba has made the top 20,” said Walter Thompson, lead author of the survey.

Zumba’s rise in popularity comes as no surprise to Joan Jones, co-owner of The Studio Fitness in Vandalia.

She and her husband, Doug, were introduced to the Latin-inspired dance fitness program a decade ago and started teaching in 2003.

They opened their studio in 2007 and have trained more than 6,000 Zumba instructors from across the country. Jones was hooked from the first time she tried Zumba.

“It was fun, it was easy to follow and you could move at your own pace,” she said. “And anybody at any fitness level can do it.”

WONDERFUL ACCIDENT

When Columbian fitness instructor Beto Perez forgot to bring music to his aerobics class, he was forced to improvise.

He dug out some of his own tapes from his backpack — Latin salsa and merengue — and the first Zumba fitness party began.

It wasn’t long before the class with the Latin beat was the favorite in the fitness facility and by 1999, Perez made the move to Miami to bring Zumba to a new audience.

What started as an improvised aerobics class in Columbia is now an international fitness phenomenon with trained instructors working in more than 200,000 locations in 125 countries.

An estimated 12 million people worldwide participate in Zumba weekly.

FEEL THE MUSIC

“Fun” and “exhilarating” aren’t always used to describe exercise, but the words are frequently used to describe Zumba.

“Doug and I have said we’ve tricked people into exercising,” Jones said. “It’s like you’re at a party, it’s so much fun. At the end of the class, people have big smiles on their faces and they’ve burned a crazy amount of calories.”

Depending on body weight, fitness level and the intensity of the class, participants can burn anywhere between 400 to 800 calories, on average, in an hour class.

FIND A CLASS

It couldn’t be any easier to find a Zumba class. The “Find a Class” tab on Zumba.com indicated that there are 71 classes available within a  5-mile radius of the 45409 ZIP code.

Those classes are held at a variety of sites — from the Miami Valley Hospital to Always Ballroom, from the Grace United Methodist Church to the Kettering Recreation Complex. The Studio Fitness offers 40 classes led by 18 instructors every week.

There are a variety of classes for different fitness levels: from Zumba Gold, geared toward beginners or older adults, to Zumbatomic for the younger set.

And the best part is that the exercise sneaks in while you cha-cha and samba those calories away.